Disclaimer: These are my personal views and do not represent any organization or professional advice.
Sat, 17 Jan 2026 10:47:09 +0200
Wine Makes Itself
It has been said by Natural winemakers that winemaking is 90% vineyard and 10% cellar. I believe this to be false. I reckon that wine makes itself and the winemaker need only provide the right environment for it to do so. Wine is inevitable.
Yet winemakers meddle with it incessantly. They analyze, alter, add, remove and modulate every aspect of the wine from its beginning in the vineyard through to its death in the bottle and why? Why do they find it necessary to do all of these things? The answer lies in the fact that man no longer makes wine.
Sure, it is called wine and it does contain grape juice but this is just happenstance. If the winemaker could rid himself of the vine he would do so immediately and without thought. It is a hindrance to his product, his creation. It is a thorn in his side and an unpredictable chaos he must fight and so conquer, lest his product not turn out as planned.
Just as each sibling in a family is different despite coming from the same parents and being made the same way, so was wine. Each vintage was something different, something unique and something that could never be made again. The wine was alive, born in the vineyard, raised in the cellar and living out its life in the bottle. In constant flux and different from one moment to the next it bided its time waiting to be poured. Here lay the beauty of wine and we destroyed it.
You see, sometime in the last century wine went from being a living, natural and blessed gift of Nature, to a dead, standardized, man-made concoction. Winemaking became akin to cloning; each winemaker designing an unnatural, artificial beverage and then forcing subsequent vintages through manipulations and chemistry to match identically.
The bacteria and yeasts already present on the grapes killed and replaced with a cultivated yeast monoculture having "ideal" traits. All human skin contact with the wine prohibited. Nothing left to chance. Taste, smell, color, clarity, alcohol level, sugar, bitterness, sweetness, astringency, acidity, alkalinity, free particle size, effervescence, etc., manipulated and controlled.
At the winemaker's disposal around 150 different additives to make this possible. Once considered adulterations and fraud now standard use in trade. The scientific method so entrenched as habit from the biggest vineyards to the backyard vines, it is inconceivable for anyone to make wine outside of this system. Everyone now needing an oenologist to advise at a moment's notice which of these additives to use, at what quantities and when.
The vineyard, once a wild haphazard space where vines lived in harmony with, and nurtured by Nature, now row after identical row of crucified vines, artificially fed and attached to life support. In essence the present day vineyard is a factory farm and like all factory farm models, entirely dependent on man and science for its survival. Nature now reduced to the chaotic disrupter of this man-made synthetic order.
The resulting beverage standardized, sterile, unnatural and no different to other beverages like cola or lemonade. Exactly the same, every time. A shallow (lacking the infinite depth and diversity of life) and convenient product of profit-driven, reductionist minds, rather than a labour of love. And because the winemaker is not making wine but rather playing by the rules of a man-made system of chemistry, the winemaker is wholly and utterly dependent on it. Left alone with the vineyard he cannot produce wine for, sadly, he has forgotten how. Or worse still, the winemaker has never known.
And yet, here is how simply wine was made: Grapes were picked. Skins were broken. Juice was fermented. If fermentation is simplified to mean time, it can be reduced further: Break skin. Wait. That's all there was to it. Everything necessary already contained on and within the grape itself.
Removing all preconceived ideas for what a wine should be, it is very easy to make real wine. The vines will tell you when they are ready to be picked and the wine too, when it is ready for the bottle. Patience is key. The whole creation speaks, you need only listen and I believe there is no winemaking problem that cannot be solved by simply waiting a while.
Just as in the past, in order to make a good wine the human element is an absolute necessity. This is the secret: The winemaker and his family were present in the wine. The grapes would be picked barefoot, without the use of gloves, and by unwashed hands. The same bare feet that spent hours walking up and down the vineyard during the morning harvest stomped the grapes uncleaned, that afternoon. The grapes, too, were never washed and the vines and soil never sprayed with any concoction natural or synthetic.
We, like the grape and everything else, are inhabited inside and out by bacteria. Actually, I think it makes more sense to say that we are bacteria and that bacteria is an inseparable part of everything. By coming into contact with the grape juice, we enter the wine. We impart a uniqueness and quality which cannot be replicated by anyone else. And when no sulphites or preservatives are added, the wine remains alive and ever changing, even in the bottle. We in a sense live on in our wine and in living wine we can live forever.
But you see, this cannot be done at scale. The human element must necessarily be removed, machines introduced and compromises made in order to produce copious quantities of dead wine. The heightened risk of losses brings with it greater fears and the bigger the winemaker becomes, the further he departs from real, living wine. As the winemaker becomes rich, his wine becomes poor and with family removed, he finds himself all alone.
Wine makes itself. Man need only listen.
—Dylan Araps